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Boss cleared in court

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By Newsdesk
Dumfries and West
Boss cleared in court

THE boss of a Dumfries courier firm has been cleared in court of assaulting an employee who claimed he put his hands on her neck on five or six occasions and made a sexual suggestion.

The employee, a 30-year-old married woman who worked as a transport administrator, had told the sheriff in Dumfries last Friday that the final straw came when she was looking at a computer with two colleagues and he came up behind her and put his cold hands under her scarf and touched the back of her neck.
She said she was stunned that he did it in front of her colleagues and had gone home crying and sobbing in her car and reported it to the police four days later.
In the court, Malcolm Lines, 52, of Wellington Street, Glencaple, pleaded not guilty to assaulting the woman on various occasions at the APC Lines Distribution Service in the town’s Greystone Crescent between September 1 and October 9, 2014.
In her evidence, the woman, who had previously worked on a voluntary basis in a police station in England, said she had gone to the police not only because she was upset, but because she did not want it to happen to anyone else.
She denied that it had happened on only one occasion.
Following a submission by an advocate, Sheriff Brian Mahon returned a verdict of not guilty.